Hattic language

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Hattian language
)
Hattic
RegionAnatolia
EthnicityHattians
Era2nd millennium BC[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3xht
xht
Glottologhatt1246

Hattic, or Hattian, was a non-

Hittite Empire.[4] The Hittites referred to the language as "hattili" (there are no attestations of the name of the language in Hattic itself). The name is doubtlessly related to the Assyrian and Egyptian designation of an area west of the Euphrates
as "Land of the Hatti" (Khatti).

The heartland of the oldest attested language of

Kanesh to its south in the 18th century BC. They eventually absorbed or replaced the Hattic-speakers (Hattians)[citation needed] but retained the name Hatti for the region. The name of the inhabitants of that area is likewise identified with the Biblical Heth
, from which, in turn, the English word Hittite is derived.

Corpus

CTH 738: Festival for Goddess Tetešḫapi

No document has been found in which native Hattic-speakers wrote their own language. Scholars must rely on indirect sources or mentions by their neighbours and successors, the Hittites. Some Hattic words can be found in religious tablets of Hittite priests that date from the 14th and the 13th centuries BC. The passages contained, between the lines of the text signs, the explanation "the priest is now speaking in Hattic".[5]

Roots of Hattic words can also be found in the names of mountains, rivers, cities and gods. Other Hattic words can be found in some mythological texts.

All published Hattic documents are catalogued in the

Catalogue des textes hittites (CTH). Documents from Hattusa span CTH 725–745. Of these CTH 728, 729, 731, 733, and 736 are Hattic/Hittite bilinguals. CTH 737 is a Hattic incantation for the festival at Nerik. One key, if fragmentary, bilingual is the story of "The Moon God Who Fell from the Sky". (There are additional Hattic texts in Sapinuwa
, which had not been published as of 2004.)

Classification

The conservative view is that Hattic is a

Burushaski language; for instance, "tongue" is alef in Hattic and alup in Kott, "moon" is kap in Hattic and qīp in Ket, "mountain" is ziš in Hattic and ćhiṣ in Burushaski (compare also with *čɨʔs – a Proto-Yeniseian word for "stone").[10][11]

Vocabulary

Some known Hattic words include:

Grammar

Hattic has been claimed to form conventional plurals with a le- prefix: "children" = le-pinu; however, most specialists today consider it to be a possessive pronominal clitic, meaning "his" or "their".[12] It formed a collective plural by attaching the prefix fa-: fa-shaf "gods".

The genitive case was declined with the suffix -(u)n (fur "land" but furun "of the land"). Some linguists like Polomé and Winter have claimed that the accusative case was marked with es- and give the example of ess-alep "word",[13] but that has been identified by others as a pronominal clitic, meaning "their".[citation needed]

References

  1. the Linguist List
  2. ^ Kevin James, A Mystery in Clay: Codes, Languages, and a Journey Through Time to the Last Ice Age, p.148, AuthorHouse, 2009: "They called themselves Hattie, and spoke a non-Indo-European language called Hattic."
  3. ^ The New Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 22, p.593: "The non-Indo-European Hattic is an agglutinative language ..."
  4. ^ Hattian – Britannica Online Encyclopedia
  5. ^ Akurgal, Ekrem – The Hattian and Hittite Civilizations. pp 4–5.
  6. ^ Ivanov, Vyacheslav V. (1985). "On the Relationship of Hattic to the Northwest Caucasian languages," in B.B. Piotrovskij, Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, and Vladislav G. Ardzinba (eds.), Anatoliya – Ancient Anatolia, Moscow: Nauka. pp 26–59 (in Russian)
  7. ^ John Colarusso (1997). Peoples of the Caucasus; in Introduction to the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life; Pepper Pike, Ohio: Eastword Publications
  8. ^ Ardzinba, V.G. (1979). “Nekotorye sxodnye strukturnye priznaki xattskogo i abxazo-adygskix jazykov”. Peredneasiatskij Sbornik III: i storija i filologija a tran drevnego vostoka, pp 26-37. Moscow: Nauka
  9. ^ Dunaevskaja, I.M. & D´jakonov, I.M. (1979). “Xattskij (protoxettskij) jazyk”. Jazyki Azii i Afriki, III. Jazyki drevnej perednej Azii (nesemitskie), Iberijsko-Kavkazskie jazyki, Paleoaziatskie jazyki. G.D. Sanžeev, (ed.) pp 79-83. Moskva. Nauka
  10. ^ Касьян А.С. (2010). Хаттский язык // Языки мира: Древние реликтовые языки Передней Азии / РАН. Институт языкознания. Под ред. Н.Н. Казанского, А.А. Кибрика, Ю.Б. Корякова. М.: Academia. (in Russian)
  11. ^ Kassian, A. (2009–2010) Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian language // Ugarit-Forschungen. Internationales Jahrbuch für die Altertumskunde Syrien-Palästinas. Bd 41. pp 309–447.
  12. ^ see Zsolt 2012: 132 with references - Zsolt himself believes it could also be an accusative marker - and Schrijver 2018: 214-215)
  13. ^ Polomé, Winter. Reconstructing languages and cultures, 1992. p.455

Sources